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12.21.2010

what i'm reading: apex hides the hurt

I'll probably write a combined "what i'm reading" post for everything I read on my winter break. But right now I'm reading a novel I love so much, that I just couldn't wait to tell you about it: Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead.

I don't want to give too much plot away, because I love the way the novel unfolds, but here's enough to go on. A "nomenclature consultant" is hired to help a town re-name itself. This is a man who dreams up the names that brand our world - the popular pharmaceuticals, the cell phones, the toothpaste, household cleaners and video game systems. Now he's going to judge which name best suits an old town with a new look - new money and new computer-related jobs.

But the town already has a name. Gentrification and job growth are important, but what about tradition? Which leads to the question... whose tradition? Turns out, the town's current and historic name was itself a re-naming, not unlike "America" or the "West Indies". History is written by the conquerors - and the definition of "traditional" depends on where we start.

History, race, class, advertising, language, and consumer culture converge. Yet somehow this all happens in a slim, wryly funny, wonderfully readable, little miracle of a book. I am fascinated by - and so envious of - how certain writers can do so much in so little, layers of meaning packed into so few words.

Apex Hides the Hurt skewers marketing, advertising, and contemporary consumer culture. It's a commentary on the pervasiveness of marketing in our lives, and how marketing reduces everything to its demographic parts. It's about language, and how language is exploited to sell - products, ideas, people, history, anything.

The novel also plays with the contemporary penchant (or obsession) for naming every phenomena of the world around us, the kind that Urban Dictionary collects, but perhaps with a biblical reference, as a man continues to name the animals.

What do you call that terrible length of time between when you see that your food is ready and when your waitress drags her ass over to your table with it? He saw Regina emerge from the back of the restaurant. His eyes zipped to the plate sitting on the kitchen ledge. Tantalasia. Rather broad applications, Tantalasia, apart form the food thing. An emotional state, that muted area between desire and consummation. A literal territory, some patch of unnamed broken gravel between places on a map.

Apex Hides the Hurt even contains a wry send-up of libraries and librarians. A town librarian has written the official history of the town.

Winning over the town librarian for sympathetic press wasn't too much of a task, he figured. A set of leatherbound Shakespeare would do it.

Later, the narrator tries to visit the town library, only to find it has been displaced by a big-box clothing chain, a fictional version of Old Navy.

On the rare occasions that he entered libraries, he always felt assured of his virtue. If they figured out how to distill essence of library into a convenient delivery system - a piece of gum or a gelcap, for example - he would consume it eagerly, relieved to be finished with more taxing methods of virtue gratification. Helping little old ladies across the street. Giving tourists directions. Libraries. Alas there would be no warm feelings of satisfaction today. The place was a husk. The books were gone. Where he would usually be intimidated by an army of daunting spines, there were only dust-ball rinds and Dewey decimal grave markers.

Whitehead writes the hipster librarian with a perfect eye for detail. As she chats with the nomenclature consultant, he thinks, "Slimpies: Ready-to-Wear Shrugs for When You Just Don't Have It in You."

* * * *

Before the digital era and the explosion of activist creativity, before YouTube and viral marketing - and before the shelf life of taglines had been reduced to nanoseconds - there were some standard activist slogans you'd always see. The same dozen sayings would emblazon the t-shirts, bumper stickers and postcards sold at demos and folk music festivals. "I long for the day schools have a surplus and the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale" and "Why doesn't Crayola's flesh-coloured crayon come in 52 shades?". In those days, there was something called a "flesh-coloured" crayon, a pinkish-beige hue.

Now we live in an era where flesh-coloured crayons come in many shades. Our TV screens are populated by people of all colours. But is that multiculturalism promoting equality, empathy and understanding among all people? Or is the appearance of diversity merely a tool used to induce more people to buy more products? This is a central question of Apex Hides the Hurt. It's about, among other things, what I wrote about here: "you can't find inner peace in a bottle (of iced tea)".

With this brilliant little book, Colson Whitehead becomes one of My Favourite Writers.

* * * *

I've also read Whitehead's wonderful, unusual debut novel The Intuitionist, in which ideas about race and how we perceive the world converge and double-back on themselves in a world of skyscrapers and elevator inspectors. Whitehead is also the author of some of the greatest words ever written about New York City, a collection called The Colossus of New York, the cultural grandchild of E. B. White's classic Here Is New York.

8 comments:

The Intuitionist is an amazing book. I always think of it when I push an elevator call button and - ding - the doors open immediately, because the car was at my floor, waiting.

(I had an (spooky?) experience at my last job in New York while (or shortly after) reading the book. I walked out to the elevator bank, pressed the button, turned and walked briskly towards one of the 6 or 8 elevator doors, that particular door open and I walked in, never breaking stride. I hit the floor I was going to, the doors slid closed, and I thought .. what the hell just happened?)

I started John Henry Days, but did not get very far. (Shortlisted for the Pulitzer? I'm astounded to read that.) Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind when I read it.

I started John Henry Days, but did not get very far. (Shortlisted for the Pulitzer? I'm astounded to read that.) Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind when I read it.

I didn't want to read it at the time. It reminded me of Zadie Smith's Autograph Man - which I also haven't read - the weird second novel after a highly acclaimed and brilliant first novel. But now that I have loved two of Whitehead's books, I will try others.

And I assume we know each other well enough to take the piss without the winky emoticon. I hope so!

Nope, not me, I'm always the cautious one and will never offer the piss (knowingly) without a frippin emoticon.

I wish there was a series of dog emoticons: a play-bow emoticon, a chagrinned tail between the legs, a rowdy bark, an hysterical dance of vehicular excitement, a low snarl, a good roll on the back in the snow, a sloppy kiss, a sullen eye-roll, and so on.

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You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing, there will be no result.Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.Margaret Mead

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.Karl Marx

There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.Howard Zinn